Ripley St Thomas' School, Ashton Road, Lancaster, Lancashire
This building was originally known as the Ripley Hospital. It was built for the education and maintenance of 300 orphaned and fatherless children of Lancaster and Liverpool. It was built in 1856-64 to designs by J Cunningham. It was built at the expense of Mrs Julia Ripley, on behalf of her late husband Thomas Ripley. He was a wealthy merchant from Liverpool who had been born in Lancaster in 1790. The building cost £30,000. It included a first-class gym, woodwork and metalwork rooms, a domestic school for girls, a heated swimming-pool, four courts for playing fives and enough full-sized football pitches to allow 150 boys to play at the same time. A farm of some 40 acres kept the school supplied with home produced meat, milk and poultry, and a vast kitchen garden gave a constant supply of fresh vegetables. This was thus a school well in advance of its time.
